Progressives around the country can breathe a little easier today: James Adkisson has been sentenced to life behind bars for the deaths of Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger, the Unitarian Universalist martyrs who died during his assault on their church in Knoxville, TN last July.

Many of us intuited at the time that Adkisson's rampage was exactly the kind of rancid fruit that would inevitably take root in an American countryside thickly composted with two decades of hate radio bullshit, freshly turned and watered with growing middle-class frustration over the failing economy. That suspicion that was verified in the days that followed, when police searched Adkisson's apartment and found it filled with books and newsletters penned by Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and other right-wing hate talkers.

But Monday, Adkisson told us himself -- in his own words -- just how central right-wing eliminationism was in driving him to his shooting spree. Shortly after he was sentenced Monday, he released a four-page handwritten "manifesto" -- which he'd intended to be his suicide note -- to the Knoxville News (the full .pdf can be downloaded here). In it, he unleashes the full measure of his hatred for liberals -- and encourages other would-be right-wing warriors to take up arms and follow him into battle.

Some choice excerpts:

"Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime. I hate the damn left-wing liberals. There is a vast left-wing conspiracy in this country & these liberals are working together to attack every decent & honorable institution in the nation, trying to turn this country into a communist state. Shame on them....

"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book. I'd like to kill everyone in the mainstream media. But I know those people were inaccessible to me. I couldn't get to the generals & high ranking officers of the Marxist movement so I went after the foot soldiers, the chickenshit liberals that vote in these traitorous people. Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence."

"I thought I'd do something good for this Country Kill Democrats til the cops kill me....Liberals are a pest like termites. Millions of them Each little bite contributes to the downfall of this great nation. The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is to kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just kill yourself. do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals.

Suspected anarchists carried out a dozen firebombings Thursday, targeting the homes and offices of a top anti-terrorism prosecutor, a prominent politician and judge, in attacks that heightened concern over the police's ability to deal with escalating political violence in Greece.

Authorities said one person suffered minor injuries during the firebomb attacks that occurred in Athens, all using makeshift bombs made with camping gas canisters.

The attacks did not cause serious damage, police said, but most were carried out in daylight — in a brazen departure from the arsonists' usual pattern of nighttime strikes.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attacks, identical in type to ones frequently carried out by local anarchist groups against symbols of state authority, banks and cars. Arrests are rare.

Arson attacks have sharply increased in the wake of massive riots in Greek cities in December, triggered by the police's fatal shooting of a teenager.

Late Thursday, police fired tear gas and clashed with youths in the northern city of Thessaloniki during a rally organized by anarchist groups to demand the release of those arrested in the December riots.

Police officers associations said they favored calls to restructure the force, possibly merging small precincts in the capital with larger ones, in an effort to stem the wave of violence.

The wife of accused Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff pulled $15 million out of a brokerage account only days before her husband was arrested, Massachusetts' top securities regulator said on Wednesday.

Secretary of State William Galvin said Ruth Madoff withdrew $5.5 million on November 25 and $10 million on December 10 according to reports produced by Cohmad Securities, a firm co-owned by her husband.

How American corporate philanthropies launched a national campaign of ethnic cleansing in the United States, helped found and fund the Nazi eugenics of Hitler and Mengele — and then created the modern movement of "human genetics."

The shire council covering some of the areas hit hardest by the bushfires was warned five years ago that its policy of encouraging people to grow trees near their homes to give the appearance of a forest would lead to disaster.

One of Australia's leading bushfire experts, Rod Incoll, warned Nillumbik Shire Council in a 2003 report that it risked devastation if it went ahead with changes to planning laws proposed by green groups that restricted the removal of vegetation.

Mr Incoll, the Victorian fire chief from 1990 to 1996, and David Packham, a former CSIRO bushfire scientist and academic who also produced a report on the issue, argued against the regulations, which actively encouraged the builders of new homes to plant trees around the houses for aesthetic reasons.

Mr Incoll told The Australian yesterday the proposed planning rules were "foolhardy and dangerous and ought not to be proceeded with".

"But they were nevertheless instituted," he said. "That is certainly one of the things that people will be looking at as an aftermath of this tragic event."

Mr Packham, now an honorary senior research fellow at Monash University's school of geography and environmental science, wrote in his report, after inspecting the Kinglake to Heidelberg Road: "The mix of fuel, unsafe roadsides and embedded houses, some with zero protection and no hope of survival, will all ensure that when a large fire impinges upon the area a major disaster will result."

Mr Incoll said that in 2003, green groups were pushing for changes to planning laws that included restrictions on the removal of vegetation, "and worse still, the requirement for planting vegetation around and almost over houses, as part of any planning permit to build a house in the shire of Nillumbik, so it gave the appearance from the outside of being a forest".

In 2003, the Nillumbik Ratepayers Group asked Mr Incoll to assess the bushfire risk, and the proposed planning rules.

Council elections were looming, and planning was a major issue. "The green group carried the day in council and the rules came to pass," he said.

Giant flames engulf every floor of 44-story building and it remains standing, yet limited fires across just 8 floors of WTC 7 brought down building within 7 seconds on 9/11. How can NIST's “new phenomenon” explain this one?

A fierce fire consumed all 44 floors of a skyscraper in Beijing today, shooting 30 foot flames into the air, but unlike the similarly-sized 47-story WTC 7, which suffered limited fires across just eight floors, the building in China did not collapse.“The fire was burning from the ground floor to the top floor of the large building, the flames reflecting in the glass facade of the main CCTV tower next to the hotel and cultural center,” reports the New York Times.

“The 241-room Mandarin Oriental hotel in the building was due to open this year. Flames were spotted around 7:45 p.m. and within 20 minutes the fire had spread throughout the building, dominating that part of the city.”

“Hundreds of firefighting vehicles and police blocked off all approaches to the building - which was also set to house a luxury hotel due to be opened in 2009 - with flames appearing to leap 20 to 30 feet into the air,” adds The London Times.Compare images of WTC 7 with those of the skyscraper fire in Beijing. Note that the Beijing skyscraper appears to be leaning due to the unorthodox design of the building - it did not suffer any kind of collapse.

'This is not CORE OF CORRUPTION, but this is made by the same filmmaker. A mini documentary about the New World Order written and directed by Jonathan Elinoff from Loose Change, details the basic understanding and evidence to introduce someone unfamiliar with the information. Jonathan's film series, Core of Corruption, is sometimes featured and the expected release date for that series is March 27th, 2009. Another film you might remember Elinoff from is RAW: Republicans Against the War which was another mini-doc released exclusively online, also available on this channel.'

When I served as Assistant Secretary of Housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the first Bush Administration, I discovered that the government was paying billions of dollars to large banks, defense contractors and universities to collect and manage data on the people and resources of the United States.

The lead defense contractor at HUD was paid approximately $150 billion to run the systems. (That was later to increase by even greater amounts.) No matter how much we paid to create and maintain rich databases, it was almost impossible for me to get any data that I needed to do my job. What I did get required a extraordinary effort on my part.

My efforts to get basic management and financial information was met with fear, lies and endless passive aggressive behavior. I soon learned that data about money in government was like cigarettes in prison. It was a currency, traded for power and position. Data that was supposed to be public was not easily available to government officials and it was certainly not available to the average person. Data that was supposed to be private appeared easily accessible to a variety of financial interests.

Years later, my company Hamilton Securities Group served as lead financial advisor to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). We were ordered by the agency to implement a comprehensive portfolio strategy and collect the necessary data from the agency. Most of the data needed was supposed to be publicly available. Thus began a data war during which various parts of the agency and the defense contractors who controlled and managed the data made it impossible for us to get various portions of the necessary data.

Frustrated, we started to build a software tool that simply identified all the federal data publicaly available online that informed resources in communities and would allow the user to aggregate and display the data by neighborhood. My employees were afraid of the project, so I finally assumed the initial leadership myself.

There are a lot of reasons to support that theory. To Wall Street economists, such an event is heresy and therefore unthinkable. Yet Wall Street is the very La-la-land that bred the idea of a perpetually indebted nation in the first place.

Number one among the indicators favoring this scenario is what is happening in the U.S. Treasuries auction market.

Last Thursday, an $30 billion auction in five-year notes failed to stir the interest of traditional primary dealers. The auction itself was saved by an anonymous “indirect” bid.

Buyers are discouraged by the prospect of what is expected to amount to $2 trillion total issuance for the full year of 2009. The further out the maturities on notes, the more bearish the sentiment towards them. The only way to entice buyers is through the increase in yields.

But with yields at 1.82 per cent, five-year notes were met with a demand for 1.98 times the amount offered - the lowest bid-to-cover ratio since September. A sell-off in treasuries began in earnest upon the conclusion of that auction.

The U.S. Federal Reserve suggested last week that it was going to step up its treasury-buying activity, and the mainstream media interprets this as a form of market support. What it actually is evidence of growing anxiety and desperation on the part of the Fed as the realization dawns that demand for treasuries is progressively evaporating.

The increased demand for gold as an investment witnessed throughout the last two weeks that has pushed gold to a 4 month high is further evidence that investors across the board are gravitating more towards gold and away from U.S. debt.

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Roots

Revelation 13

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...

...And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?...

Mark 13

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.